“Hayabusa 2”: researchers go from a successful landing on the asteroid

The Japanese space probe Hayabusa-2 is believed to be landed on the asteroid Ryugu. “It seems that the landing was successful,” said a spokeswoman for the Japanese space Agency, Jaxa. A final confirmation of that yet. The incoming data would need to be further evaluated.

Hayabusa 2 had dropped last October, 300 million kilometers from earth, the German-French Mascot Lander on the asteroid. The Lander collected then approximately 17 hours of data. The German-French-Japanese Mission aims to provide new insights into the origin of our solar system, as well as the possibility of an asteroid to ward off threat of a collision with the earth.

Hayabusa 2 should take in his very short landing samples from the surface and then into orbit around the comet’s return. Whether Collecting samples, succeeded, in a few days to say with certainty. By the end of next year, the probe will return to earth. Its predecessor had brought in 2010, for the first time, soil samples of an asteroid to the earth.